The one with the helper?

This one is for the girls. You know who you are.

So I have a new babysitter. Okay, let's say it: nanny. She's my son's nanny. But the problem is that my ex is out of work currently (and newly married to a woman who has gajillions of dollars in the bank), and he wants to be with our little guy after he gets home from school. I would, too. The thing is, he is the one who initiated this whole babysitter thing. I enrolled our son in an after-school program two years ago that my ex vetoed ("no son of mine...") and it's been my job to keep a babysitter in place since then.

Okay, that's neither here nor there, really, because the net-net is that I have a lovely Austrian girl named Christina who I hired for 20 hours a week and I really only need her to watch my son for about eight of those hours. She's kindly agreed to take Fridays off (unpaid) until my ex gets a job and she is needed all five days. But that still leaves a LOT of hours to fill. So, she helps me. She cleans, she shops, she does errands. It's great. I am getting very spoiled. However, there is a bit of a language barrier. She and I spend a lot of time on the phone, with me explaining to her things like what "detergent" is and what Drano and Liquid Plumb'r are, and what "clogged" means. These conversations are sometimes hilarious.

So last week, off she goes to the grocery store with my list. Before shopping, she goes through the list with me on the phone so I can explain any items that are not straightforward. At the bottom of my list are tampons. It says "tampons-regular-unscented." First, she asks what "un-skented" means. We get through that quickly -- I say "no perfume." Then she says "Do you want the kind with the helper or the short one?"

My oh-so-clever buddy Kerri sent this: